An exhaustive, meticulously detailed memoir of a passionate American that is sure to challenge and delight many readers.
The sweeping memoirs of a Danzig immigrant.
Luehning reflects fondly at a supremely brimful life beginning with his birth in 1940 in the northern town of Zoppot in the Free City of Danzig, mere months after the start of World War II. His father, a conductor and classical pianist–turned-soldier, disappeared during wartime, leaving Luehning’s mother to single-handedly raise him and his younger sister, Heike. They eventually relocated to Hoechst, near Frankfurt, Germany, and then immigrated via military troop ship to Brooklyn, New York, in 1947. The author’s prose shines best when regaling us with stories of his grade school days, family trips to Times Square and the family pizza shop. He also tells of various rollicking teenage adventures at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, where he later graduated as a distinguished maritime engineer. Those years were a crucial watershed in his life, encouraging him to “identify my ambition in cold logic and to work my ass off to succeed.” The remainder of the memoir is comprised of smoothly told anecdotes on a series of ships, a stiff reunion with his father, a marriage and divorce, a struggle with sobriety and a stint in graduate school. Luehning later became an executive chef and owned and operated several gourmet restaurants for nearly a decade. His journey concludes with his mother’s tragic death and his retirement in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Photographs of the author’s family and of the ships on which he sailed provide vibrant visual references along the way. Running parallel to his own memories are those of his mother, “Mutti,” penned in 1988. They independently form a dramatic, candid chronicle worthy of its own stand-alone memoir, supplementing the emotional depth of the family legacy while offering an added perspective on the era. Luehning, now 74, has clearly led an extraordinary life, and reading his memoir is like spending the weekend with a friendly, war-veteran anecdotalist. This tome not only entertains, but also reflects the fortitude and perseverance needed to survive life’s storm fronts.
An exhaustive, meticulously detailed memoir of a passionate American that is sure to challenge and delight many readers.Pub Date: July 18, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: KVL Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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